Broadcast networks often derive a substantial revenue stream from advertising. Traditionally, commercial time slots have been sold to advertisers based largely on crude demographic information. For example, a commercial for pet products might be shown during a nature show based on market research indicating that people who watch that type of program are likely to be pet owners. The pet product commercial would be displayed to all program viewers alike, regardless of whether a particular viewer did in fact own a pet. Under this paradigm, commercials could be scheduled for insertion into a broadcast stream ahead of time because all scheduling decisions were made long in advance of viewing by the network users.
More recently, it has become possible to gather information about individual network users and to use that information to target a particular asset to a particular user or set of users. For example, in a particular network environment, it may be possible to determine whether a given household subscribing to a cable television service includes a pet owner by examining credit card purchasing information for household members for pet-related purchases. Alternatively, similar information may be deduced from monitoring viewing behavior. During a commercial break in a given program, a pet product ad could be delivered to those subscribers deemed likely to be pet owners. Meanwhile, non-pet-owning viewers of the same program or channel could be shown other commercials more appropriate to those viewers. At the same time, the pet product ad could be shown simultaneously across different programs or channels to viewers who have been identified as pet owners. This latter concept, pioneered by Invidi Corporation of Princeton, N.J., can provide a larger receptive audience that might otherwise be difficult to reach.
A variety of mechanisms have been proposed for presenting targeted advertisements to users of a broadcast network. In one approach (referenced as the “forward-and-store” approach below), user equipment such as a set-top box stores commercials ahead of time and displays a selected commercial during a break in programming, optionally overriding what might otherwise be presented on a given network channel. Another method is to populate one or more dedicated channels with a variety of commercials and require the user equipment to “channel hop” during a commercial break to those network channels showing the most appropriate ads for a given user. Ideally, this channel hopping is invisible to the network user.
More broadly, various methods have been developed for targeting particular assets to particular users of a network. Information about a given network user may even be gathered in real time and used to select appropriate assets for delivery. For example, a user may interact with the network in ways that suggest certain characteristics, whether or not the user actually reveals any identifying information. In any case, the actual asset presented to a network user at any given time may depend on characteristics of the instant user. Thus, at least some asset selection decisions may be made just prior to presentation of the selected asset or assets. Moreover, even where decisions are made substantially ahead of time, it may be necessary to execute significant processing, e.g., related to insertion or channel hopping, at the time of asset presentation.